


what's my worth?

by TheSoliloquy



Category: The Walking Dead & Related Fandoms, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, F/F, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Major Character Injury, Mentions of Suicide Attempt (past), Non-Explicit Sex, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Episode S07E08, and speculate why Arat is loyal to Negan, we get peace without All Out War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-13 23:46:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15376035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSoliloquy/pseuds/TheSoliloquy
Summary: “You are fucking magnificent” are the first words he ever says to her.He’s got swagger and confidence, and she’s got nowhere to go.Negan offers Arat his hand and she takes it.or: Some skin-wearing creeps attack them on a run and suddenly Arat's dragging an injured Negan around Virginia with two jumped-up assholes. Who the hell carries a katana in an apocalypse, anyway?





	what's my worth?

**Author's Note:**

> So this fic is me trying to piece together why some of the Saviors are so loyal to Negan (i.e. Arat, Laura) since I don't think it's just that they're scared of him.
> 
> I also wanted to find a way to peace besides All Out War- the result is a mashed up flashback fic that combines Arat's backstory with the Saviors and Militia coming to an understanding...

 

Arat’s yanking Negan forward, shooting at anything that moves. Negan’s swearing at her, the walkers, the skin-wearing weirdos, the fucking sky.

“Where the fuck is Prick and Marie Leveau?”

Damn it. She’d forgotten about them. They jump into a car and Arat speeds them around the block until they spot Rick and his dreadlocked chick backed into a corner by walkers, _real_ walkers this time.

Negan cracks open the door, eyes wild, Lucille in hand, and bellows “GET IN, FUCKWITS!”

There’s no time to think. They’re in the car and miles away by the time Rick comments on the knife in Negan’s back. 

 

\--

 

“You are fucking magnificent” are the first words he ever says to her.

Arat’s a grunt, some run-down, dirty chick they run into looking for food. A couple of the men, it’s been a while since they’ve seen a lady that ain’t rotting and one’s stupid enough to come at her, guns blazing, fly open.

They end up pulling her off his body, his dick in her hand, his vocal cords in her mouth.

And Negan, some lunatic with a baseball bat, he takes one look at her and laughs a little too loud, grins a little too wide, takes the dick from her hand and tosses it over his shoulder. His pals are looking at him like he’s fucking mental.

He’s got swagger and confidence, and she’s got nowhere to go.

Negan offers Arat his hand and she takes it.

 

\--

 

“JE-sus, _shit_ , go gentle on me, lady- _ACK!_ ”

An hour later, a whole sixty minutes of Negan’s swearing and Rick’s confusion and Arat’s _‘don’t touch it’,_ and they’re pulled into some secluded area by a mossy alcove. The grass is slick with dew. The rocks are slippery.

Arat has Negan perched on one, bloody knife by her foot, one hand stemming the flow as she eases his jacket off with the other. His left hand hangs uselessly by his side. The knife was jammed into the joint below his shoulder blade and the entire of Negan’s back is covered in blood, the white of his shirt turned deep red.

“Good thing you turned, boss.” Arat mutters to him, and he chortles once, “Could’ve got you in the spine.”

She presses a hand to the wound, ignores his hissed ’ _fuck_ ’, and turns to Rick and Michonne, loitering by the car. Arat regards them for one wary moment.

“You wanna give me a hand?” She says, finally. It’s a request not a question.

They hesitate. Michonne glances at Negan, his eyes pinched shut and hidden by a hand. Even Arat can’t tell if he’s smiling or grimacing.

“Me and Arat don’t make it back…” He tells them without turning, his jaw twitching to the side as if he’s about to tell a bad joke, “Your folks don’t make it to next week.”

And it isn’t a threat, Arat knows, but a statement of fact.

“Besides… don’t you wanna see me without my shirt on?”

 

 

\--

 

Negan’s more than a lunatic, she learns.

His merry band of dickheads aren’t a solo show, they’re just one supporting act of a larger cast and Negan ain’t even the star. Negan gives her the choice of joining his crew, hitting the open road, or taking up shack in some dilapidated old factory they call home. Arat chooses the crew and when he’s curious she only shrugs and says “got nothing better to do.” Honestly, she’s too lonely to fuck off and too restless to bed down.

No chance in hell she’s going to sew pillow cases for points when _she’s good at this_.

They trust her with knives at first, put her up against meat puppet after meat puppet and watch the bodies begin to stack. After she saves Negan from losing a chunk of his face they upgrade her to a pistol, a beautiful Beretta, and then to a rifle.

Bit by bit, she assimilates. There are no ranks, officially, but Negan with all of his charisma calls the shots and the rest of them fall in line.

Soon Arat can separate them by name, and by every little nuance that builds their character.

Simon is borderline psychotic and closer to Negan’s ear than any of them. She learns not to question him. There’s Morales, who sleeps too much and speaks too little; Gavin, who’s too soft to have survived this long; Laura, with a neck tattoo she swears is the barcode of her favourite cereal, who laughs almost as much as Negan, fingers lingering on Arat’s neck long enough to make her sweat.

She learns from all of them: how to threaten, how to command respect, how not to miss. Morales even teaches her how to count cards, after Negan catches him out and threatens to ram his fist up the Colombian’s ass and use him as a sock puppet.

There are others, plenty others by the dozens in all of their different crews, but Arat doesn’t bother to learn their names unless she needs to. It isn’t so much a community as an alliance of cliques. They mingle to barter and make themselves known, sometimes to “go get that clam slammed” as Negan says, but none of the others have discipline and Arat learns not to be a woman in this place.

She learns to prefer the lunatic and his crew, the so-called Saviors.

 

\--

 

They’re headed back to the Sanctuary in the morning, whether the two Alexandrians like it or not.

Both of them are sat in the back now. Honestly, Arat wanted to leave them behind in the chaos. Even now she’s one stink-eye away from putting her gun to their heads and telling them to fuck off, make your own way home. But Negan told her to stop, so she did. He wants them to go back together, so they will. “Chill the fuck out, they don’t even have guns.”

Still, her pistol’s in her hand, silencer on, safety off.

Negan’s quiet in the passenger seat now, asleep against the window. He’s still wearing his stained t-shirt, the back puckering into divots as the blood dries, jacket draped over his knee. She used his red scarf as a sling and her own shirt for makeshift bandages, cut into strips by the black chick as Arat thought _who the fuck finds a katana in this place?_

Negan had giggled, face twisted into a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

_“I should’ve known this was all it’d take to get you out of your clothes.”_

Arat looks at him now and sees the scarf pulling loose at his neck. She clicks the safety on her gun and puts it down on the seat between her legs, leans over and tightens the knot carefully. Negan’s voice sounds out from against the window, low and heavy.

“All good, mom?” He doesn’t open his eyes. The dimples in his cheeks deepen.

“Thought you were asleep.”

“I could do with a lullaby. Wanna sing me a song?”

She rolls her eyes and clicks the safety back off her gun. “Asshole.”

The only response is the deep rumble of his laughter.

 

\--

 

The first time they fuck, Arat imagines Laura’s fingers on her neck.

Meat puppets- zombies or whatever the fuck they’re called- are beating on the car windows, pressing their faces to the glass and leaving trails of maggots smeared behind.

Negan, his lips on her pulse, tells her to ignore them.

“This car is a fucking tank.” He tells her, and unhooks her bra.

“Best wait ‘til morning.” He says, and undoes his fly.

“You are fucking magnificent.” He breathes, and pulls her down.

Arat doesn’t say anything, just runs her tongue along his teeth, tangles her hands in his hair, moves as if she’s done this a thousand times before. Negan giggles to himself and leans back against the headrest.

“Who are you thinking of right now, Arat?” His voice is low, eyes tracking the crease between her brows as she moves, up and down, “Who’re you thinking of?”

 

\--

 

In the morning Ricks asks “You know the way back?” in that god awful drawl, and Negan snorts beside her.

There’s a smirk on his face, elbow leaning against the door. He looks up at Rick’s reflection in the rear view mirror and pretends he’s hurt.

“Are you fucking in _sulting_ us, _Rick_?"

Arat would laugh if her bladder weren’t bursting. The man will have his fun, no matter what. Besides, they’re miles from home and she sure as hell ain’t gonna talk to these prissy Alexandrians.

“River Windsor’s coming up.” Negan tells them, and wiggles his fingers in some vague direction ahead, “There’s a bridge there we can cross, get some water between us and those creepy-ass shitheads.”

Except when they turn the corner there’s a hundred walkers between them and the other side and suddenly the boss is swearing and the pricks are shouting at her to _turn the fuck around_.

“ _MotherfuCKER!”_

Too late. Before Arat’s got her foot on the brake there’s a walker on their roof and cracks in the windscreen. They plough through a dozen more of the fuckers before the car smashes into the bridge wall, airbag punching Arat so hard in the face she feels her nose crack in a small explosion of blood. She’s busy thinking _fuck that hurt_ when Negan’s screaming her name in her ear, and “We need to get the fuck outta here!”

They’re already surrounded, rotten hands clawing at the windows.

“Help me with this.” Rick’s scrabbling with the sunroof, one of those Arat remembers from her childhood – she used to wind it open and closed, made her Ummi mad– except this one only opens halfway. As per their fucking luck.

Michonne hits at the glass above with the hilt of her katana and Negan joins in with Lucille, but his left arm’s out of commission, the angle’s awkward, and Arat can see how hard he’s gritting his teeth to do it. She smears some of the blood from her face, holds out her hand and waits.

It’s like asking a man if she could sleep with his wife.

Negan fights with himself for a short moment, but in the end he hands her Lucille with an angry grunt and gives her space. By the time Arat breaks through the sunroof the windscreen is caving in and suddenly Negan’s pushing her up and out, hand full of ass. When she’s up there she turns back, and draws her gun when she sees Rick moving to push Michonne out.

“Uh-uh.” Arat points it between them, lines the barrel in turn with their foreheads. No way in hell she’s leaving the boss in there with Rick the Prick.

It’d be so easy for them to push her off the car, so easy to leave Negan for dead.

Arat helps Negan out, yanks him back from the edge when he unbalances at the top, swaying, and hands him Lucille. Then she reaches back down and grasps Michonne by the forearm, ignores the suspicion in the other lady’s eyes as she pulls her and then Rick out.

“ _Jesus Fucking Christ,_ now what?” Negan’s dropping the walkers one by one as they reach for their ankles. There’s barely space for all of them up there, pressed back to back.

“We gotta jump.” It’s Rick’s idea, gesturing over to the bridge wall, to the river.

“You’ve got to be _fucking_ kidding me.”

 

\--

 

Trapped in that car in the dark, they take their time to finish.

Afterwards, Negan smirks and says “So, Laura, huh?” before she’s even caught her breath.

Arat presses her face into Negan’s shoulder and exhales. She can practically sense the laughter coming.

“Never had you pegged as a rug muncher.”

“Does it matter?” Arat squirms on his lap, watches his eyelids flutter at the movement. “Who were you thinking of?”

Negan looks at her, head tilted back, eyes half-closed. His hand snakes up her back into the hair at the nape of her neck.

“Do that again.” He says.

 

\--

 

The second they hit the water Arat pisses herself.

She surfaces and heaves in a long lungful of air, thinks thank fuck her dad put her in swimming lessons and _where the fuck is Negan?_ Rick and his lady are fighting the current nearby but there’s no sign of him.

_Wait… is that…?_

Lucille’s poking upright from the water, like some strange and ugly shark fin. Jumping from a bridge with a knife wound might be a death sentence, but the boss’d be damned if he let his baseball bat drown. Arat swims over against the thrashing current, follows Lucille down to grabs fistfuls of Negan’s t-shirt and hauls him up. She laces her arms beneath his and pulls him back against her, kicking water until her feet find ground and she can drag him to shore.

Negan doesn’t move. He doesn’t breathe.

Arat breathes for him, moulds her lip to his and _breathes,_ pumps his chest like she was taught. _Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive._ When Negan comes to, he vomits water into her mouth.

“Shit” is all he can manage, and “Fuck”. Negan coughs, curls in on his side, eyes clenched shut and face twisted. Lucille’s still clutched in his gloved hand. Arat’s impressed he’s kept a hold on her through all this.

“Those assholes still alive?”

Arat spits, looks up and sees the two others, Rick and Michonne, dragging themselves onto shore nearby. For a second she wonders if they’ll ditch, but she doesn’t care either way. They look just as exhausted as she feels.

“Looks like they’re sticking with us.” She says.

He chuckles, a half-drowned sound that bubbles up from his chest, and Arat can’t tell if he’s thinking they’re stupid or smart.

“Alright, give me a… a minute.”

Arat plops down on her ass next to him and sighs.

 

\--

 

If Arat were as religious as she’d been raised to be, she’d have died a long time ago.

When Simon shoots dead an entire crew for double crossing them, Arat searches their pockets. When Negan beats a man’s head into a bloody pulp for stealing from them, Arat stands and watches, silent. When a new boy is bit while scavenging, Arat drops him without hesitation.

She sees some punk pinch Laura’s ass and curb stomps him for the audacity.

This is their world now. This is how they survive.

 

\--

 

Negan’s bleeding again, droplets splattering against the gravel, slow motion. He groans as Arat pulls his t-shirt up, threads it over his head and down his left arm like a wire loop game. The bandages are fucked, soaked through, bloodied, and out of place. It’s a wonder they stayed on in the first place, even with Arat’s knots. His scarf didn’t make it at all. 

“I loved that scarf.” He’s telling her, and he sounds both angry and heartbroken. His skin is cold to the touch under her fingers. “And that jacket. That was a badass fucking jacket.”

“There was a hole in it.” She mutters, “Like there’s a hole in you.”

Negan chortles. There’s a smartass reply coming, she knows, some variation on _that’s what she said_ but instead he looks her in the eye and says “Thank you, Arat.”

Behind them, Rick and Michonne are watching impatiently. They need the two assholes to get home, she knows, but Arat still isn’t sure why they haven’t just fucked off until Rick speaks up.

“You know where the hell we are?”

Negan grins at him. “Would you believe me if I said yes?”

 

\--

 

Once, on a run, she gets got by some cunt with a metal pole.

The blow hits her on the temple and everything whites out for a long time. When she wakes, they tell her it was Negan who carried her out of hell.

 

\--

 

A good thing about the apocalypse, chosen from a very short list: people get used to a lot of walking.

Of course Arat would take a car over her own feet any day of the week: the old Arat, the soft, pre-apocalyptic, mommy’s girl Arat, would be suffering by now. Now the calluses on her feet are thick enough for broken glass

“There’s a road nearby.” Negan says.

His dark hair is greasy and there’s a sour-sweet smell whenever she’s near him, like grape juice and copper and decay. It’s obvious that he’s sick. Several times now he’s thrown his good arm over her shoulders, hand dangling by her neck, like they’re buddies on the way to the movies.

“We built a blockade here a year back, maybe more… stopped some people getting out...” Negan unwinds his arm from Arat’s shoulders and pats her cheek as he does, smirking at the glare she shoots him. “Might be we can get a car working, get us home to Kansas. How’s that sound, Ricky Dicky?”

The two Alexandrians don’t believe them at first, but Arat guesses they can see Negan’s out of commission, with or without herself and Lucille. They’d followed them this far, after all.

Heck, they’re practically friends now in Negan’s book.

The blockade, as it turns out, is a single van wedged into a ditch at the side of the road. Judging by Negan’s “ _the fucking thieving bastards_ ” it used to be more. Arat doesn’t know, she wasn’t with the group back then; she was probably back up in Philly watching her family die. Or somebody else.

It looks like the van’s empty, nobody in the cabin through the dusty windscreen. Rick opens the driver’s door but there’s no key in the ignition, so Arat pushes past him and reaches down to yank off the panel beneath the wheel. Wires out, strip them, touch together…

Rick’s leaning over her but she can’t be bothered telling him to move.

“Anything?” That god awful drawl will get on her nerves soon.

“Nah.” Arat throws the wires down and leans back with a sigh, head hitting the seat with a soft thump. She looks up at Negan as he watches her from against the bonnet. “It’s dead.”

The big man looks annoyed. He sets Lucille down against the front of the van. Arat clocks his wince as he pushes off from the bonnet, sidling past Rick and chewing the inside of his cheek. Michonne inspects the van’s back door.

“You leave anything back here?”

Negan shrugs with one shoulder, and then grimaces.

“Not that I remember. We weren’t lookin’ to throw a banquet,” he replies, eyes glinting, “just stop them.”

Michonne only glares at him and reaches for the handle.

Later the woman will swear she tripped, but one second she’s opening the door and the next a dead fucker is pinning her to the ground.

Negan reacts before any of them. The toe of his boot connects with the walker’s temple just as its jaw unhinges around Michonne’s throat and it explodes in a shower of brains, tongue poking through its cheek like some shrivelled worm.

“Holy fucking shitballs.” He grinds his heel into the walker’s eyeball, swears angrily at the ground. “Fuck were they thinking, god damn motherfuckers.”

He didn’t know it was in there, it’s clear, and Arat thinks the Alexandrians would have to be fucking stupid to think Negan set this up but hey, people have surprised her before. Rick is livid.

“What the hell was that?” He hisses in Negan’s face. It would be fucking laughable, the sight of his short-ass self squaring up to the big man, if Negan doesn’t look like a dead man walking.

In a second Arat has her gun levelled with Rick’s cheekbone. The cold touch of metal against her neck tells her Michonne isn’t happy with that. _My bullet’s faster than your toothpick, bitch_.

What follows is a tense moment. Nobody moves. The breeze begins to kick up the dirt around their feet.

As ever Negan looks amused, lip twitching upwards and tongue caught between his teeth as he regards Rick. Whatever threat there is in his eyes is lessened by the deep red circles around them. Arat had washed Negan’s t-shirt as best she could back at the river, but already fresh spots of blood are blossoming at his shoulder blade.

“It looks like…” He says finally, slowly, drawing out every syllable, “Your ninja lady friend here- sorry, _Michonne_ , I forgot my manners there, not your name- Michonne has found us a place to rest our weary fucking heads.”

The big man reaches out and grips Arat’s wrist, pushes down her gun. Arat feels the sword disappear from her throat. Both Alexandrians step back.

Negan grins at them all, and then his knees give out.

 

\--

 

In that white place, after she’s hit by the cunt with the metal pole, Arat swears there’s someone speaking… some deep and husky voice in the ether.

The voice talks to her, tells her about the world before, about how Virginia is never going to get its own major-league team, about how they are never going to find out how Lost ends and “why couldn’t the fucking world go to shit after the finale?”

Mostly they talk about their wife.

 

\--

 

Of course, it’s real fucking hard to dampen Negan’s spirits.

“What the fuck is this?”

He’s got his arm around Arat’s shoulders again, only this time it’s not entirely his choice. She bends with him as he inspects the flower, lips parted, tongue poking out.

“Hah, fuck me sideways!” Negan giggles. His voice is hoarse. Arat wonders if he’s losing his mind. “It’s a motherfucking Sundrop. Guess it must be summer.”

“It’s always summer here.”

“You need to appreciate nature more, Arat, you know that?”

“Come on.” She tells him, glances up at the backs of Rick and Michonne, fingers intertwined. There’s a light in front that looks like it could be the tree line. “Let’s get out of here.”

Negan doesn’t move. His eyes are still on the yellow flower.

“Lucille used to love Sundrops.” He murmurs.

Arat doesn’t know what to say. When he looks back at her, surprised at himself for having spoken, she avoids his gaze. Negan closes his eyes then and growls, twitches his head to the side as if there’s a fly buzzing in his ear. She can feel the heat radiating from him in waves. The arm she has wrapped around his waist is practically burning.

“You good?” Arat asks.

“Yeah…” He coughs, deep and wet, and grimaces, “Let’s go.”

From ahead there’s the soft swish of branches as Michonne reappears, and she beckons them forward. There’s a small smirk on her lips.

“What?” Arat asks.

“Found some transport.”

 

\--

 

When Arat asks Negan if he visited while she was out cold, he denies it.

 

\--

 

Arat has never touched a horse in her life let alone ridden one, but when God produces two big brown beauties and plops them down by your feet, saddle and all, it’s time to learn fast.

They ride through fields for hours before they come to a road and follow it west, walking along the grass to soften the _clop clop_ of the horses’ shoes.

Arat clings onto Negan, more to stop him from falling off than herself. It’s as if his body’s giving up, swaying in the saddle, his head lolling. Negan had said something about a cabin in the woods nearby but in the same breath told them his wife was waiting for him at the hospital and “Fuck, I need you to call me a cab, Arat, I can’t miss another fucking appointment. Arat?”

They stopped listening to him after that.

“I got it.” Michonne leans over from her spot behind Rick and decapitates the fifth walker of the day.

They’re a strange sight, Arat thinks, like a couple from some morbid Disney romance. A feminist’s wet dream. As Michonne returns to her position there’s a chime in the air, far in the distance. Arat blinks.

“Twinkle twinkle little star…” Negan murmurs into his chest.

There it is again, a phantom noise in the wind like metal against metal, deep from the trees. Michonne and Rick hear it too, this time, heads pivoting like meerkats to find the source. It’s from their right. Rick looks back at Arat before urging his horse forward into the treeline, Arat right behind them.

Twice they stop to reorientate themselves, straining to hear the clanging. The closer to the noise the more dense the trees become, until Arat has trouble controlling the reigns around Negan. Negan places a clammy hand on top of hers.

“Watch out for the net.” Arats feels the words reverberate through his back, pressed against her chest.

No sooner has Negan spoken does Rick’s horse walk straight into it.

 

\--

 

Negan and his Saviours, they get antsy eventually.

The guy in charge is a “first-class fucking thundercunt”: a man who runs the place with no rules, no plans, and no discipline. Every week their crew has to defend their own haul, dispensing out punishment like some kind of secret police, and the constant need to watch their backs is tiring.

One night they sit around a fire, passing round a single cigarette, betting bullets on Texas Holdem with cards so dirty Arat has to lean towards the flames to tell clubs from spades.

Laura flips her the bird when Arat calls her bluff and cleans her out, laughing all the while. From the side Arat can see Negan stretched out on the ground, a twinkle in his eye. He’s mid-wink when a scream sounds from beyond their camp, way in the middle of some other faction. A woman.

Negan’s gone in a second, Morales right behind him.

When they return, both men are silent. Arat hands Negan a skin of water to wash the blood from his face. Nobody asks any questions.

As the fire begins to die, Negan flicks the last of the cigarette into the ash and exhales slowly, smoke pouring like plumes from his nostrils.

“Folks,” He says, “It’s time things change around here.”

 

\--

 

Negan told them the guy was a nutcase, some old crackpot who’d been preparing for the end of the world long before the world had ended. He booby-trapped the whole place up so well the Saviours had stayed away. It’s fucking hilarious really: the asshole prepared for the end of the world and then offed himself after the fact.

In any case, the corpse left them with a dusty old shack to stay in, several tins of mulch, and a dirty well out back. 

They decide to hole up for a few days, tearing open some of the tins that night and eating whatever hadn’t grown its own microecosystem. The guy must have been insane, or else had eaten like a king when things went to shit; all that’s left are tins of peach slices, maple cured bacon flavoured baked beans, a mystery meat that stinks like sweat, and a single tin of spaghetti Arat claims for Negan. She leaves it on the table next to the bed they put him in. They eat their meal together in silence, her, Rick, and Michonne, and she sends out a little prayer as an apology for eating the pork. Apocalypse or not, habits are habits- even if she doesn’t believe there’s someone listening.

Michonne has started to warm to Arat, she thinks, if only enough that she’s stopped watching her every move. It’s just as well since Arat’s decided it’s definitely against her best interests to kill the two Alexandrians. Besides, they both helped her half-carry Negan inside and the bar for gratitude in this world is low enough that she’s meeting it. Rick, on the other hand, avoids her eyes and won’t set foot in the bedroom. 

Arat spends the first night wide awake by Negan’s bedside, her gun in her hand and the door locked.

In the morning they lift the grate from the well and find plenty of water at the bottom. Rick pulls up a bucket and cups a handful, sniffing at it suspiciously.

“It’ll do.” He says, but Arat waits for him to drink before she fills hers and Negan’s skins.

“You know how to make a fire?” Arat asks. Rick nods. “Mind boiling me some water?”

She fills a wooden bowl with the water he gives her and washes a rag before taking them both to the bedroom. Michonne follows her in. Arat doesn’t tell her to leave. Between the two of them they strip Negan down to his boxers, manoeuvring limp limbs out of sweat-soaked, blood-stained clothes.

Then, Michonne holds him on his side as Arat peels away the crusted bandages. Underneath, the skin is red and the wound at Negan’s shoulder raw and raised.

He stirs as Arat’s scraping the pus away, breath rattling in his chest.

“Lucille?”

“Nah. Morning, boss.” She says, brightly.

“I’ll punch you in the fucking throat.”

“Go ahead. Your back’s infected.”

“Oh excuse the _shit_ outta me, didn’t know you were Florence Nightingale.”

He coughs. Michonne places her hand on the side of Negan’s face, heel on his chin, fingers against his neck, and presses down. She bends at the hip, and stares into his eyes. The big man goes quiet.

“Stay still.”

“…You need to work on your bedside manner.”

 

\--

 

In the days before Negan makes his move for power, she pulls the wrappings off his wrist somewhere in the middle of pulling off his shirt. It’s a mistake. Arat thinks it’s just for the sake of handling Lucille, protect himself against injury like true batters, and in the moment it’s another obstacle to getting what she wants.

The scar on his wrist is long, pale, and _unmissable_ , separating his arm in half following the bone.

Either Negan doesn’t notice what’s happened or he doesn’t care, his face is buried between her legs a moment later.

When they pause for breath- and for Negan to take a leak- he surprises her.

“You get a good look?” He calls from the bathroom. The door’s wide open and Arat can see everything from the freckles on his back to his pasty white ass.

“Seeing a bit too much, right now. Wanna have a shit while I watch, too?”

“Nobody told you to watch.” He looks over his shoulder at her and winks, then shakes himself off, “And that’s not what I meant.”

Arat frowns, props herself up on an elbow. Negan scoops up the wrapping as he walks back towards the bed and begins to wind it back in place around his forearm, watching her watching him.

“I didn’t see anything.” She lies.

“Bullshit.” Negan says, and laughs. “Did you just lie to me?”

There’s a time and a place for a witty comeback and Arat senses the mood is turning against her favour. She scoots back against the headboard.

“It’s none of my business.”

“Hah. You’re right, it’s not.” Negan sits beside her on the bed. His fingers pinch her toe, slide up her calf, thigh, over a breast. There’s barely a hair between them, his lips centimetres from hers. He tells her anyway. “I was weak… but now I’m strong.”

Negan’s hand end its journey curled around her neck. He applies just enough pressure that when Arat wets her mouth and swallows, she feels the ridges of her throat rub against the webbing between his index finger and thumb.

“ _But_ …” He breathes against her lips, “I’m gonna need you to keep this between us… okay?”

She can only nod, and Negan kisses her.

 

\--

 

The infection only gets worse.

Negan sweats through his bedsheets and they resort to forcing water down his throat when he won’t co-operate. “Let me die” he tells Arat, and she shushes him before the assholes can hear.

“You’re a god damn cat, remember? Negan doesn’t die.”

But he doesn’t hear Arat. There’s a film over his eyes, as if he might burst into tears, and she can see he’s not really here with her. Whatever he’s seeing is in his own head. So Arat stays with him, drags cool cloth over his burning skin, and waits for him to fall asleep.

She’s watching the rise and fall of his chest when she realises Michonne is standing in the doorway. Arat blinks at her.

“Everything alright?”

“I should be asking you that.” Michonne nods towards Negan.

Arat leans back in her chair, feels the tip of her gun press into her thigh, and shrugs. Michonne doesn’t ask again. She crosses into the room and perches on the desk, eyes on the man in the bed. An awkward silence holds the air for a moment before Arat realises Michonne is looking at the tattoo on Negan’s chest, over his heart: a skull in a Davy Crockett hat against a backdrop of two crossed rifles, and below it, a name inscribed on a banner.

“He didn’t call his bat Lucille ‘cause he thought the name was pretty… did he?”

Arat just looks at her.

“Who was she?”

Still nothing. Michonne crosses her arms across her breasts and god damn Negan would be egging Arat on right now if he were awake.

“I’m trying to understand both of you… How do you- How do you _follow_ someone like that?” She looks angry, her voice a hiss, “Negan beat my friends to death with a _bat_. I’ve seen my people eaten alive trying to scavenge for things we hand _straight over to you_! You-you _shot_ an innocent woman in the face because he told you to, and _you didn’t hesitate_.”

Arat doesn’t know what to say, so she lets the other woman speak until she loses the words to say and lapses into a tense silence. Michonne’s knuckles are white, fingers gripping the edge of the desk. Brown eyes stare into brown eyes.

Eventually Arat breaks the contact, gaze flickering over to the bed when Negan murmurs something unintelligible into his pillow. She sighs, passes both hands over her face and leans forward, elbows on her knees.

“They were going to rape me.” She says, conversationally. “Those sick fucks. ‘til he came in all gung-ho with Lucille.”

 _And took a knife to the back_ is left unsaid.

“Let’s let him sleep.” Arat stands. Michonne follows her out of the room into the common area, closing the door behind them.

They settle at the rotted kitchen counter. Outside, Rick is pulling up water. Arat can feel him watching her but the rattle of the bucket doesn’t stop and he doesn’t come inside.

“When -” Arat pauses, tries again. “When I was found by the Saviours, they weren’t the Saviours…”

And so Arat tells Michonne everything, from before to the Saviours, from the body count to the saved.

Or rather, she tells Michonne everything she needs to know.

No sense in getting personal.

 

\--

 

He takes power and suddenly everybody is a Saviour.

There are no screams from the camps, no starving bodies in the mud. Everyone stays in line.

Negan says “Kill somebody” and Arat picks who.

 

\--

 

It’s Michonne who persuades Rick to stay for longer, after the boss is too far gone to know up from down. Arat sees them arguing in the garden.

That night she leaves the bedroom door ajar so they can hear Negan calling for his wife.

  

\--

 

They’ve had the medicine all along, Arat knows.

There is no doubt in her mind those two assholes found the pills when they got there, not when they spent so much fucking time turning the place upside down while she was busy holding a bucket under Negan’s face. So they’ve been sitting on a Hail Mary while she watches Negan inch towards a slow death.

Arat doesn’t say any of this, of course. Doesn’t even let the anger register on her face.

“Where’d you find them?” She asks.

Michonne offers her the orange pill pot, arm outstretched. “They were buried in the garden. Rick found them this morning.”

Arat just looks at her. The older woman at least has the decency to look away.

“What you said yesterday… about what the Sanctuary was built for. We can… we can help that happen. We want that to happen. That’s what we’ve been working for all this time, cooperation, between Alexandria and the Hilltop. Before everything happened with the outpost.”

“Why would your people want to help us do that?”

Michonne only looks over her shoulder and Rick appears. He looks from Arat, turning the pill pot in her hands, to Negan, comatose on the bed. For a cold man, Arat can see every emotion possible flitting through his pale eyes.

She wonders if that’s why they all follow Rick. Hard for a man to lie, with eyes like that.

“We’re going to help each other. That’s how we survive this.” He tells her, and she believes him. “It’s never too late for peace.”

 

\--

 

Negan could be brilliant, Arat knows.

All the nights she needs to avoid Laura and he needs to forget Lucille, Negan tells her things, his plans for the place, how they can all save the world. Sometimes, rarely, he tells her about where he’s been and where he came from, and only when he’s got something buried somewhere perfect enough that she isn’t listening.

If he wants to, she knows Negan could have the whole of Virginia in the palm of his hand.

 

\--

 

Negan opens his eyes to Arat’s face.

“You… are fucking magnificent.”

 

.


End file.
